February 16, 2009

If I had dared to say anything so ridiculous while I was still under my mother's roof, I would have been forced to write it out proper, like, till it was well cemented in my brain, innit?

But once they go to school, it seems to me our powers of influence as a parent have little chance against the power of playground clique. And like any tribe, they'll form their own speak. So, when you can’t understand your kids, it’s not a sign of dementia: it’s a symptom of the generation-gap challenge. But rather than fix their figuratives, we should stop and listen. Slang can provide a fascinating insight into their lives – and it’s easier than reading their diary…

All language evolves, but not arf as fast as slang. Slang is the lingo of the young, and while we stick fast to the abbreviations and distortions of our yesteryear, the distance between us and our kids is growing. They may not be bovvered, innit, but it’s disconcerting for an adult trying to communicate with their child; oh, alright, trying to listen in on their phone conversations!

Before we ask: why do they do it? We do have to take a moment to mourn our loss of memory and our descent into fogie-dom. After all, we did it. Our expressions may seem more benign in comparison, but purely because colloquial language is a sign of the times. And in the words of Dylan – which means little to all those born after 1970, and even that’s pushing it – the times they are a changing’.

“In-groups, with their own 'micro-cultures'-behaviour, rituals, prejudices, fads and special obsessions tend to evolve their own private languages,” says Tony Thorne, Head of the Language Centre at King's College, London, and author of Shoot the Puppy: A Survival Guide to the Curious Jargon of Modern Life (Penguin). “These are mainly to give names to things, like drugs or music – that standard language doesn't have names for.” And before we let mouths gape and aghast, such pastimes were around in our day. If you’ve forgotten them so readily, they may well have had something to do with it!

“Slang can be generated by drugs and related behaviour, by crime – especially by gang culture and by music or the internet, or any exclusive activities of subcultures. It exists always as a deliberate alternative to standard language. It is the most colloquial form of language on a spectrum that goes from formal to informal.”

But on a more innocent note, what’s happened to expressions in my UK-based childhood like Skill, Tops and Ace? They were good enough for us, weren’t they? “Important elements of slang are described by linguists as 'vogue terms' and these rely on their novelty or trendiness for their power, therefore they have to constantly be renewed and replaced,” says Tony. “But they don't necessarily disappear, they just get picked up by less trendy speakers – so 'wicked', for example, has not been used by the ultra-fashionable since the end of the 1970s, but is still used in some primary and junior school playgrounds. It's the words for approval that signal whether you are in the know or not that tend to change fastest – fab/gear/ace/brill/dope/phat/sick etc.”

But more than a reflection of recreational dabbling – oral or aural – slang can be seen as verbal glue, or branding. “It helps the members of the in-group to define themselves and to keep outsiders out; so they will typically have nicknames, categories of people that others can't recognise, together with their own special insults, put-downs and fashionable terms of approval and disapproval,” says Tony. “Sometimes these private vocabularies stay within a very small, exclusive group, but sometimes they cross over and are adopted by a wider group, maybe eventually being picked up for song lyrics and by the media.”

But should we be bothered. That’s with a TH. Catherine Tate’s Lauren – a trendier take on Little Britain’s yeah-but-no-but Vikki, with her Chav (hope that’s right) self-possession and teen aggression makes us laugh, but it also makes us cringe. What if our kids spoke like that! And if they do already – should we be horrified with this sloppy talk?

“To a linguist slang is not sloppy: it can sometimes be used as a substitute for looking for the more precise term perhaps, but it can also be very creative, inventive, nuanced and even poetic – it can extend a person's linguistic range and capabilities rather than limiting them.”

Poetry? Yeah but, like, no but, whatever - poetry? “We can disapprove of it when it is used at the wrong time, in the wrong context,” Tony adds. “Andyoung people may need to be reminded that slang – just like other styles of language such as technical/very formal/literary – must be used appropriately. It has its place, but will cause problems if used in formal situations, in exams, job interviews or in the presence of more conservative people.”

So from a parent’s point of view. It’s got to be toleration, in moderation, ant’it!

February 14, 2009

I was never really keen on the idea to begin with, but since becoming a mum I’ve developed a fear of dying. No – more a fear of being dead.

It’s not because non-existence is too weird to contemplate or I’m petrified of meeting the final hour – not like when bags dropped out of the hold (and several centilitres dropped out of my bag) on a Boeing 747 bound for Australia in 1999. I was scared for my demise then. But I was young and had everything to live for. But quite a lot less to live for then than I have now. Because now I have children. And yet I don’t get that fear. Or maybe it’s just a different fear. The difference between not beinghere, to not being there.

And I’ve thought about it: not being there for my children. I’ve thought about it a lot. I have this thing where I can build scenarios in my head and run them, like film. Not for amusement; I use them to test out consequences, reactions and emotions. Sometimes it’s good stuff, and if you are ever invited to a James Bond fancy dress party stand on your own in a corner and see if anyone guesses you’re Solitaire. That worked for me, mentally. But I reel in the bad stuff too, like blazing arguments. Still, those I can re-script until I perfect my role and get in the last word (my normal response to confrontation is to gulp ineffectively like carp). But in the worse-case consequence I have ever simulated – the one where the kids live on without me – I can’t perfect the ending; because I don’t have a role.

At first I imagine a blitz-esque bonding between my darling husband and darling children. You see, in my scenarios they are darlings, all of them. He looks incredibly handsome and twenty years younger and the kids are mature beyond their years and extremely well-behaved; and he’d say as he wiped their soggy cheeks and patted his heart We lost Mummy, Mummy gonny. But Mummy always here (my children are actually old enough to understand and use correct verb conjugations, but for the sake of drama...). And then, because he is practical – so practical we have colour-coded lists about the house, coding the various coloured lists with their own colour codes – I am sure he would then say Oh well, must battle on, eh, kids? Now who wants a McDonalds? All in favour say Yay! And there would be a resounding YAY.

From what I‘ve seen, a Happy Meal succeeds in erasing all devastation from the minds of children. It is the ultimate placebo. I mean, you can’t be given a happiness pill (an anti-depressant one, yes, but not a go-get-happy one), but call beef in bread flaps, nuked fries and a junky plastic gadget a HAPPY meal, and voila! Mummy who? Look, my toy talks!

That is of course exactly what he should do. I mean, what sicko wants their children to be miserable and eternally dysfunctional because of their mother’s premature departure? Of course I want them to have a Happy Meal... although, could we compromise? Could the toy that comes with the burger be a miniature doll. Of me? With a heart that lights up like ET when you press a button?

Post Happy Meal he’d see them through their recurring pains – he would try to take their minds off me so they’d stop using me as an excuse to stay up at night all late and upset. But once galvanised, he would also be responsible for making my memory last on, making sure they didn’t forget me. He would have to tell stories about mummy. And what story would he tell when tapping his head... Ah, here’s one you’ll like, kids... What, I wonder. You see, I can’t die yet – I don’t have any crowd-pleasing obituary-fillers. I’m not a pioneer – I don’t think I’ve been the first to do anything, except maybe eat three jars of hamisher gherkins in one sitting; I’ve never reared lion cubs or spent a year building mud huts or won a big prize for my enormous brain; I’m not chiselled wit, hardly Sarah Silverman or Jennifer Saunders – what funny stories could he tell? Well, and then your mother made your dinner and – wait for it , wait for it.... She burnt the pasta. I know! Who burns pasta, right?

And what happens when he gets senile and he can’t even remember my name, let alone a faintly amusing story about silly mummy and some back-to-front undies? What happens when the kids are looking through his photo albums and come across a young me – will he get me wrong? Will he say that’s a girl I met in Mexico. And when he died, they would look at these photos and think no point in keeping pictures of a girl dad met in Mexico, even before mum was around.

And speaking of mums, what if I wasn’t the only one? What if another mum entered the scene? Oh my goodness. Another mum. Which of course, is exactly what I’d want for my children, and preferably she’d be more doting and creative than me to counterbalance my husband’s intolerance for the sentimental and ‘arts and crafts’. But what if she was a FUN MUM – what if she let them stay up until 9 o’clock or made carton robots their way, when I always insisted they do it my way? Or, what if she were insecure and forbade any talk of mummy number one, or insisted on talking about me – but not as a mother with a deep seam of diamond adoration for my children, but one whose veins were strangled by alcoholic excess and eyes narrowed by dissatisfaction with my lot like a real life Miss Hannigan? I couldn’t bear it – not that I’d be there, of course – but my little darlings, my little pig-droppings! What would they think! They would hug her, (worse-case scenario: they would hug her homely but gym-firm frame) and cry: thank goodness you came along. And there they’d be. Happy family. A second chance. Not that we’re not a happy family now, but you always think, maybe, you could all be a bit happier, right?

I am aware that this is self-indulgence at its worse and to fill my days with thoughts of morbid outcomes and self-pity makes it appear like I have too much time on my hands. But remember, I’m compacting a good few years of angst into a few pages, you understand, and if die, obviously I wish them all multitudes of amnesia and McDonalds. Anyways, the situations in which I could die on a daily-basis are few are far between – unless you count the school run. And death by boredom. Mainly, my gizzard tingles when I’m either in the back seat of a taxi with fur seats or about to board a plane (once I’m on I’m almost instantly reassured by everyone else’s apparent ease with ‘cruising’ at 30,000 feet, and pacified like a junkie by in-flight entertainment. Unless I have my kids with me, in which case I have more chance of finding nutrition in my food tray than watching in-flight entertainment or being pacified – and besides, fear of going down with my kids... It’s a whole different story. And I think one that is even too horrific for this project).

I also get scared of dying when remind myself I’m scared of dying, which is disturbingly quite often. I can be sitting at my computer, half–buried in work (the other half more genuinely committed to online Scrabble) when without me knowing it my brain practically invites the thought in. If it’s not knocking at the medulla oblongata, it’ll go call for it, like a missing cat. De-eeeeath? Oh De-eeeath! And finally Death will approach, reluctantly, wiping his shoes on the mat – are you sure this is a convenient time? – and Brain will say yes, yes, do come in. And Death, now quite at home, feet up, eating smoked salmon sandwiches, will proceed to provide some jolly scenarios in which I might slip away (some scenarios are a little too abrupt for slipping), which invariably I will find upsetting and subsequently eject Death, telling him never to darken my doors again. But the stain remains (didn’t wipe them thoroughly enough) – and without even the aid of long-haul or manky mini-cabs, I’ll start to envisage my family life without me.

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t see a one-parent-pass-away family as the ideal. I know the kids would much rather they had two parents to play off and it’s not that I’d like to be the other way round either. Obviously, if I am honest (again, I should be), if one of us had to go I would always rather it wasn’t me. But not for a second would I encourage my current husband to take his colour-coded lists to the great filing cabinet in the sky, because I do love him – I mean, who else could take one look at my sorry disposition following a failed ninth rewrite for Up The Duff Monthly and say ‘what you need is my chilli con carne with garlic- and lime-infused avocado salsa and a nice glass of that Chilean Cab’...? Precisely. He’s an excellent father, exactly the sort of person I’d like to leave in charge of my kids should something terrible happen, but for his chilli con carne alone I’d rather he was alive. And while I think of it, apart from the children, of course, it’s a good reason for me to remain here, too; I’m a big eater, a don’t-stop-till-I-pop eater, and I’ve heard the portions on the other side are non-existent.

I have never been able to fit in with the School Gates Mothers (SGMs). Any type. There are many, but all appear to fit into three categories. The first wear tracksuit bottoms that have more unidentified stains than a youth hostel’s upholstery and look at me as if I’m too posh to understand their predicament; the second are the impossibly thin ones with high-lighted short hair – sports hair – that come to school in tracksuit bottoms that would sound an alarm at any stain other than spirulina-infused sweat (my love-handles have love-handles, which tells them I’ve clearly let myself go); and the third are those who look suburb-come-place of worship. I think they look at me and see a dangerous – possibly contagious – instability.

All of them, cruelly grouped by attire and I apologise, probably see a woman, still dressing as if she were a twenty-something ‘70s throwback in jeans and geometrical-print top, and decide they are simply not going to take her seriously. Not at least until she can purchase lady-fit jeans from a reputable department store that refuse to flare or ride below the tropic of naval. I’ll never do that. Never. And you know what? I don’t want to be taken seriously. Nattering and pinching invisible dust from their knees like dexterous hens isn’t my thing. If only one of them would lean against something, dressed en vogue smoking a fag (I gave up long ago but admire anyone who still does it in the face of slit-wrist health warnings and the even more petrifying mums-who-smoke-choke brigade) or sit cross-legged on the floor – I hate all this thrombosis-forming knee-crossing (leg up and over aaaand swap, repeat ad child-pickup-um); and those hunched backs where you sometimes see the spine-knuckles protruding as they lean across each other or scratch an ankle; then there’s the pushing back up the nose of sunglasses, the tucking of hair behind ears... It’s impossible to explain how my own anthropological study of SGMs has frenzied me to the point where I dread school chuck-out at 3.30pm. But it could be because I anticipate standing alone at the edge of coop like those ostracised chickens you see with no feathers on their necks, socially conditioned to believe I should try to interact, too insecure to do it with any conviction, but self-bullied into making an attempt but bucking like a kid faced with a filthy bedroom and an ultimatum. They must think she’s weird.

Occasionally an SGM will take pity and sidle over with a how are you? and a how’s yours settling in? and I should be grateful for the lifeline, but I look into her eyes and see Mummy’s To Do list on the fridge, Tupperware catalogues on her kitchen counter, compartmentalised sewing set in her closet... and I’d rather eat my own eyeballs than give a reply that would encourage any intimacy. Frankly I’m intimidated but the overly-organised. They seem too in control. Like a domestic Gestapo – getting the school forms back in time, volunteering to oversee playground recreation, making parent-contribution rosters, sneering when I ask if anyone knows when parent-teacher evening is (it was last week). And maybe I’ve yet to tap in to the joys of being ‘fully involved’, but to me it’s all a bit of a replacement for life. Not that I do anything more life-fulfilling instead. But I keep the time free in case something should come along.

Who knows, perhaps these mums go home to bonk the gardener senseless in between writing chapters of Marlow’s biography. “You won’t know if you don’t give it time,” my husband tells me. “It takes time to get to know someone.” Well, I’m nearing forty. I don’t have time to invest in small talk only to find out age 42 that there isn’t another side to Jane Smallsby, mother of Chloe and wife of Roger; and her impossibly bouncy bob is actually the liveliest thing about her. I might be wrong. I may well strike upon a bob-cut housing a wild-cat, another mum who thinks G&C (gin and cranberry, for you conformists) isn’t a sin, but a rather nice way of letting life’s aches and pains slip under the table and out of sight. Or someone who, in rare bouts of parenting bliss, rips Patsy Biscoe from the tape deck and cajoles the kids into a kitchen striptease-ercise to Grease’s You’re The One That I Want. Like I do, obviously... I can’t take the risk. If a mum isn’t going to wear her more piquant personality on her sleeve I have to let her go. Although, to be contrary, I would find someone who bombarded me with their misunderstood fetishes or personal hygiene issues at first sitting a tad alarming. I suppose the school gate ritual could be the mask that hides the more interesting underbelly, reserved for good friends. It’s a deportment that should be applauded, if so. I’m far too spill-the-beansish.

My deep discomfort, I’m sure a psychologist would tell me with a pitying nod and a hand on the knee, is because I think they are good parents and believe myself to be a very very bad one (pressed lips, knitted brow, nod, nod). She would be right. Doesn’t make me like them, though. And here is the primary reason why I hate SGMs for making me feel bad about myself: SGMs talk about their children all the time.

ALL THE TIME. Like there was no one, no subject that could lure away their thoughts or tear their mouths and minds from the most important job in the world. And it is the most important job in the world. But even barristers need to stop asking questions, even baristas need to stop drinking coffee, just sometimes. That’s my self-defence. I guess I should get a lawyer. I don’t talk about my children ever, unless prompted – me? Oh I have two of them, oh yes, very close together, I’m certifiable you know – or unless it’s to fill a conversational lull so dangerously expanding it feels like verbal ground is falling away and my lips will be soon sucked into anti-matter and I’ll never speak again. Oh my god, say something – okay – er – how old is yours? And it comes out through a mouth that must look as if it’s retrieving a stone from an olive, and my eyes, however hard I try to focus them on Jane Smallsby’s lips or chin or eyes, refuse to play, darting away guiltily. And she’ll think she’s weird.

There’s nothing to even indicate that an SGM may be finding the conversation a little repetitive, despite meeting at the school gates twice a day, every day, for most of the year. Upon year. They roll their eyes and tut, but not in ennui. Cleverly disguised as aural devotion to the speaker, it’s actually a gap-filler, something to do while another SGM is talking to hold back their own desperation to discuss the most important job on earth, according to them. I don’t feel that way. Ergo, surely, I am a bad mother. There are few other chances to discuss the most important job on earth – and much like the smoking room in an office building, when there were such things, this is the parents’ place. A place to bitch about the job. And they do. Goodness, it’s like watching World’s Finest Wrestling. The punches are there – “Pippa drives me nuts” – and the headlocks – “If Toby pinches his sister one more time, I don’t know what I’ll do” – and the knock-outs – “That’s it, I said, no more chocolate”... but you know it’s for show. A pantomime of huffs and puffs. You know without the head-shaking and the sharp intakes of air the most important job in the world would seem too easy.Fair dinkum – but they’re hardly making it sound bad enough. They swat away at childrearing topics as you would a fly.

Look, I know these mums have the same issues as I do; I know they just water it down to retain dignity, limiting school gate conversation to sleep patterns and minor tantrums. I understand their opaque personalities are probably parental burkhas donned for drop-off and pick-up.And I’m not saying it’s not hard. Quite the contrary.

It’s really hard. But I’m so traumatised by how hard it is I can barely speak. I can’t tattle about my daughter’s tantrum and not tell the full story. It will gather momentum. It’ll start as a tsk-tut tale of her reaction to some late-in-the-day discipline, but before I know it I’ll be verbally vomiting the full sorry story, how I was pushed to the edge and screamed till I went blue, till my daughter was scared of me and cried for daddy; it’s like ripping open wounds. If I met a mum who, after a particularly grotesque account of my failings to cope, said shit, that is bad, I might feel momentarily anaesthetised by her honesty, I may even giggle. Or if one said you know what, I have a secret way of dealing with that – come round to mine with a bottle and I’ll give you the spell – well, I’d be anaesthetised, possibly inebriated, and on my way to thinking no biggie, really. But experience has taught me that opening up a wound to the average SGM will not be met by first aid. It will be met by the following words: Well, I... And while the SGM interrupts to explain why she has a particular issue (not dissimilar to yours, but really, given the differences in family dynamic really not on the same page and anyway if you could just finish what you were saying...) – your wound is left open and bleeding. There’s been no closure and nobody cares. And it bleeds all the way home, leaving you weak, wobbly and primed to snap at your children, whatever it is they want. But we only wanted you to play Snakes & Ladders with us! And then you realise by the sad, orphan-esque looks on their faces that snarling at tries to make you a happy mummy might have scarred them for life. That’s why I don’t talk about parenting. Unless of course in the company where bad parenting is a badge of honour, and I can then go home with a hypocritical smirk, thinking ooh, they’re not very good parents, are they? and feel much better about myself. I might even think they’re weird.

I suppose I should give an alternative scenario, present you with a school gate scene that would make me happy. Here’s one: everyone arrives to pick up their children with a good book. The silence would be golden, you’d get in some reading time, and if there were to be a high-spirited mood in the air, one where conversation would be a good accompaniment, we could ask each other what we were reading. Not only would we avoid the agonising repetition of naughty-Johnny stories, but we can ascertain at a glance which of us might possibly be on the same page. Had I known Jane Smallsby was into the literary equivalent of a Hallmark card before she took pity and came and sat next to me and proceeded to roll her tongue around the most tedious of topics while pinning me with her bulging blues, I would have said sorry, this seat’s taken – by my bag. (Being offensive always saves time). And I have done that, the book thing. I have turned up to school and buried my nose in a book – I even made sure it didn’t have too snooty a cover; but did anyone crane to see the title or ask what I was reading? No. They looked at each other, and without moving, swung their eyeballs my way and back again. It’s a common high school manoeuvre. And it means she’s weird.

Maybe there are schools out there where mums are drawn to ice-breakers other than child-rearing – where they do ask what each other are reading, or say hey, has anyone managed to see Bill Nihy’s new film?, or start a Top-Ten conversation or comment on your tattoo. I don’t have one, but if I did I’m sure I’d like people to comment on it.

Maybe I just send my kids to the wrong school. They’re happy there. But given that I’m not, and it’s my happiness we’re talking about here, I should probably seek out a catchment that scoops up the more unhinged, who are bound to have less Gestapo-like mothers. Hey, it’s possible that they may be introduced to drugs earlier than I’d hope and encouraged in the skills of kleptomania – but what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger, right? And maybe, apart from when there’s an odd official-sounding knock at the door, I won’t have sweaty palms.

Post Script: I recently decided to join in. I fluffed up what feathers remain on my neck and de-ostracised myself. I began with hello and then did what they do – I clicked my tongue, rolled my eyes, emphasised my understanding with goggle-eyed intensity and butted in when I thought I had something to offer, or a story that was much better that theirs. Well, when in Rome... And you know, it was okay. I wasn’t knackered for once, I didn’t feel stressed as I normally do by the thud of time passing as you digest aural tripe. I was happy to chit-chat and ankle-scratch, and we actually got through child talk and onto something else before the mum realised suddenly she was wobbling in unchartered school gate talk and reached for a line about eating greens to steady herself. But I won’t be doing it every day. It’s a bit like having your hair done. It feels good and you can put up with salon selective conversation once every few months. But having it done every day? Well, anyone would start to feel a bit short, wouldn’t they?